Abstract

Top Marketers' New Guide to Marketing
A single volume distilling insights from over 30 years of practical experience
Understand the essence of marketing so thoroughly you'll lose your tongue!

Do you truly understand “marketing”?
You might actually be just pretending to know...

Dabbling in marketing can make you feel incredibly smart. But when you try to apply it at work, it never quite feels substantial. That's because you're just practicing frameworks. Unless you grasp it in a way that truly resonates, you won't be able to “do marketing” effectively in the real world.

So what does it mean for marketing to “ get it”? To answer that question, this book compiles the author’s insights—a top-tier Japanese marketer who, after years of hands-on experience, arrived at a way of thinking about marketing that makes it so clear you can’t argue with it.

Marketing is the act of engaging with people and moving their hearts. Therefore, without understanding the mechanisms of the human mind, you cannot grasp its principles. On the other hand, many marketing practices are dominated by the habit of forcing things into various frameworks, often failing to delve deeper. This stems from the universal human desire to find shortcuts, not limited to marketers, making it difficult to break free.

Furthermore, while concepts like positioning, brand, and insight form the core of marketing, very few marketers truly grasp why they are important or why building work around these ideas makes them effective. Consequently, fieldwork often becomes dogmatic, rarely reaching the level of understanding that traces back to the human mind.

This book, however, takes a different approach from many marketing guides that prioritize theory and concepts. It traces back to the mechanisms of the human mind to articulate “the mechanism of why people buy things,” explaining key marketing concepts and practices. By dissecting and reconstructing marketing concepts—explaining in plain language what each concept fundamentally means and why it effectively influences people—this book makes marketing comprehensible to anyone. It is a practical “marketing primer” that can be called a deconstruction and reconstruction of marketing concepts.

Author’s Information

Executive Advisor, Preferred Networks, Inc. After graduating from Waseda University, he worked in marketing at nine companies, including Coca-Cola Japan. He served as Chief Marketing Officer at the last four companies, including Seiyu, Domino's Pizza Japan, and Preferred Networks. In July 2025, he became an Executive Advisor at Preferred Networks. Based on the idea that the core of marketing is human understanding, he provides a wide range of advisory services, including corporate marketing practice, brand strategy, communication design, and HR training design and implementation. He is also an official PR advisor for government agencies (member of the Council on Public Relations for All-Generation Social Security and the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare Pension Public Relations Review Committee). He is a member of the Nikkei xTrend Advisory Board and a Nikkei COMEMO Key Opinion Leader. He has served on numerous advisory boards and as chairperson for marketing organizations and conferences, including the Marketer Career Association. His publications include "Strategies for Seizing Happiness" (Nikkei BP, co-authored with Dan Ariely).